In 2019 I stood on a quay in Mombasa watching a 40 foot container being opened after 34 days at sea. Inside was a five-station auto duct line, shipped from a factory that had packed it in the way it packed everything: plywood over the frame, a few steel bands, no bracing between the shear and the frame, and nothing on the control cabinet but a plastic bag. The decoiler carriage had walked 400 mm across the container floor and was resting against the hydraulic power unit. The shear blade was chipped. The customer's engineer took one look and asked who was going to pay for it.
The answer was nobody, cleanly. The bill of lading said the container was loaded and sealed by the shipper. The surveyor's report said the damage was consistent with inadequate securing. The insurance paid forty percent. The rest came out of the relationship, which is the most expensive currency there is.
Since then I have packed more than two hundred machines for sea freight, and I have a routine. It is not complicated, it is not expensive — it adds roughly 1.5 to 3 percent to the machine value — and it is the difference between a machine that is commissioned in four days and a machine that is commissioned in four weeks.
Four things, in order of how often they bite.
The first is movement. A container ship rolls; a 40 foot container at the top of a stack can see accelerations of 0.5 g laterally and more than 1 g vertically in heavy weather. Anything not positively restrained moves, and a two-tonne decoiler carriage moving 400 mm has enough energy to bend a frame. The second is moisture. A container crossing from a humid port to a cold one condenses water on every steel surface — container rain, they call it — and a machine packed in a humid factory will arrive with rust on every unpainted face. The third is point loading. Machines are heavy and irregular, and a frame resting on a single skid without a spreader will crush the plywood and then the container floor. The fourth is handling damage at the ports, which is unpredictable and mostly mitigated by making the package impossible to fork in the wrong place.
There is no single right answer. A 12 metre auto line and a 200 kg lock former do not want the same treatment, and paying for a full plywood case on a machine that will fit on a skid is money wasted.
| Machine type | Typical weight | Packing method | Securing detail | Approx. packing cost share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Auto duct line, 5 station | 9 - 14 t | Frame mounted, plywood side panels, open top for inspection | Welded or bolted steel skid, 6 lashing points, carriage blocked with timber | 2.5 - 3 % |
| Auto duct line, 2 or 3 station | 5 - 8 t | Skid plus partial crate over electricals | 4 lashing points, shear locked with steel bar | 2 - 2.5 % |
| Spiral tubeformer | 1.5 - 3 t | Full plywood case | Machine bolted to case floor, forming head braced against case wall | 3 - 4 % |
| TDF or Pittsburgh former | 0.6 - 1.2 t | Skid with plywood hood | Rolls protected with timber blocks, feed table removed and packed separately | 2 % |
| Control cabinet | 80 - 200 kg | Full case with desiccant, VCI film inside | Uprights braced, never laid on its back | 4 - 5 % |
| Hydraulic power unit | 150 - 400 kg | Case, oil drained to 10 % | Pump shaft locked, breather replaced with shipping plug | 3 % |
The percentages are of machine value, which is the way to think about it. Two and a half percent on a 200,000 USD line is 5,000 USD. A single damaged shear blade and the four days of realignment that follow will cost more than that, before anyone talks about the customer's lost production.
A duct line has a long, relatively slender frame and several heavy sub-assemblies mounted on it — decoiler, leveler, beading station, notcher, shear, forming station. Under ship motion, those sub-assemblies want to move relative to the frame, and the frame wants to bend. The packing has to stop both.
I use a steel skid of at least 100 x 100 mm box section, welded at the corners, with cross members under every sub-assembly that weighs more than 300 kg. The skid does two jobs: it spreads the load so the container floor is not point-loaded, and it gives the lashing a hard point that will not pull out. Timber skids are acceptable up to about three tonnes; above that the timber crushes at the lashing points and the tension is lost within the first day at sea.
Fork pockets go through the skid, not under it, and they are marked with stencilled arrows on all four sides. I have seen a machine lifted by the frame instead of the skid because the forklift driver could not see where the pockets were, and the frame bent at the leveler. Paint the pockets yellow. It costs nothing.
Every axis that can move must be blocked, not just braked. The decoiler carriage gets timber blocks wedged fore and aft and a steel strap over the top. The shear gets a steel locking pin through the blade holder. The forming station gets its adjusting screws backed off and the head strapped down. The hydraulic cylinders get their rods retracted and a timber spacer between the rod end and the frame.
This is the step that gets skipped when a factory is busy, and it is the step that produces the damage claims. A carriage that moves 20 mm is fine. A carriage that moves 400 mm has destroyed a ball screw.
Steel that leaves a factory at 30 C and 80 percent humidity, crosses the equator, and arrives in a port at 5 C will condense water on every surface. The amount is not trivial: a 40 foot container can produce several litres of condensate over a four week voyage, and it drips from the roof onto whatever is underneath.
Three measures, used together, handle it. First, all machined surfaces — roll faces, guideways, cylinder rods, shear blades, unpainted casting faces — get a coat of a solvent-cut rust preventive, not grease. Grease is easy to apply and horrible to remove; a proper film is 20 to 40 microns and wipes off with a solvent cloth at commissioning. Second, VCI film wrapped around the electrical cabinet and the control components, taped closed. Third, desiccant sized to the container volume, not a token bag.
The rough rule I use is 1 kg of silica gel desiccant per 2 cubic metres of sealed container volume for a 30 day voyage in a temperate to tropical route, doubled for a route that crosses climatic zones. A 40 foot high cube is about 76 cubic metres, so that is roughly 38 kg of desiccant for a simple route and 70 kg for a route with a large temperature swing. Most shipments I see carry two or three 1 kg bags. That is not desiccant, that is decoration.
The desiccant only works if the container is reasonably sealed, so the packing also includes taping the container floor vents, and putting the desiccant bags high in the container where the moisture collects, not on the floor.
Container choice matters more than most buyers realise. A 40 foot high cube gives 2.69 m of internal height and about 76 cubic metres, which is usually enough for a five station line plus a spiral machine if the line is broken down into its transport sections. A standard 40 foot is 300 mm lower and frequently does not fit the tallest section upright, which forces the machine to be laid on its side — and a duct line laid on its side is a duct line with a bent frame.
If the machine does not fit even in a high cube, the options are a flat rack, an open top, or breaking the line into more sections. Breaking into sections is usually cheapest and is something to agree at the order stage, not at the port.
Keep the centre of gravity as low and as close to the container centre as possible. A 12 tonne line loaded with the heaviest station at one end puts a bending moment into the container floor that it was not designed for, and the floor will deflect. Spread the load: heavy sections over the container's cross members, lighter sections at the doors.
Lashing is not optional and it is not a few straps. I use four-point lashing per major section, at 30 to 45 degrees to the deck, with ratchet straps rated at 5 tonnes and a straight-pull capacity of at least twice the section weight. The lashing angle matters: a strap at 60 degrees gives you roughly half its rated capacity in horizontal restraint. Straps to the container's side rails only, never to the plywood lining.
The packing list has to match the machine, section by section, with weights and dimensions for each. A customs officer who finds an unlisted crate will hold the whole container, and a hold costs more per day than the packing did in total. Photograph every stage of packing — the skid before the machine goes on, the blocking, the lashing, the loaded container with the doors open — and send the set to the buyer before the vessel sails. Those photographs are the evidence that wins a claim, and they cost nothing to take.
Also check the destination's wood packaging rules. Most countries require ISPM 15 heat-treated and stamped timber, and a crate built from untreated local plywood will be refused or fumigated at the buyer's cost. This is a five minute check that saves a two week delay.
If you are buying, ask four questions before the deposit is paid. How is the machine broken down for transport, and does the breakdown match my door and crane capacity? What is the heaviest single section and what is its centre of gravity? Is the control cabinet a separate case, and is it VCI wrapped? What is the desiccant quantity and the rust preventive product? A supplier who can answer all four without going away to check has packed machines before.
Ask, too, for the loading photographs and the lashing plan. It is a reasonable request and it tells you a lot about how the factory works. On the machines I specify for export, I now make the packing drawing part of the order: skid dimensions, lashing points, section weights, container layout. It gets reviewed with the buyer before production, which means the arguments happen in month one rather than month five.
The same discipline applies to smaller equipment. A spiral tubeformer ships in a single case and looks easy, but the forming head is a precision assembly that will not survive being dropped from a forklift, and the case needs internal bracing against the head, not just around it. A three station auto duct line is the most common export configuration for a first-time buyer, partly because it breaks down into sections that fit a 20 foot container, which keeps the freight cost and the handling risk down.
The first two days after arrival decide whether the packing worked. Unpack in a covered area, not in the rain. Remove the rust preventive with a solvent cloth and inspect every machined surface before assembly — a rust spot on a guideway found on day one is a cleaning job, found on day ten it is a replacement. Check the hydraulic oil for water; if it is milky, drain and replace before running the pump. Check the electrical cabinet for condensation, and do not power up until it is dry and the insulation resistance reads above 1 megohm.
Then level the machine, re-check the roll gaps against the factory sheet, and run a test blank before running a customer job. Almost every "the machine was damaged in shipping" complaint I have investigated turned out to be a machine that was never re-levelled after installation.
Three to five working days for a five station line, including the rust preventive cure time. It is not a bottleneck if it is planned at the order stage. It becomes a bottleneck when it is added the day before the container is booked, and that is when the blocking gets skipped.
Broken down to transport sections, always, for anything longer than 6 metres. An assembled line needs an open top or a flat rack, which doubles the freight and exposes the machine to weather. The transport sections should be designed into the machine, not cut at the last minute.
Yes, if it is wind and watertight and the floor is sound. Check the floor for delamination around the door end, because that is where forklift traffic damages it, and check the roof for pinholes with a torch inside on a sunny day. A leaking roof means container rain directly onto the machine.
It covers loss and damage from perils of the sea and from handling, subject to the deductible, and it will not cover damage caused by inadequate packing or securing — which is exactly what most machinery damage is. That is why the packing photographs and the lashing plan matter: they are how you prove the loss was not your fault. Read the exclusions before you ship, not after.
If you are planning a first import, work backwards from the container. Decide the container size, then the breakdown, then the skid, then the crate. The auto duct line range lists the transport dimensions for each configuration, and any supplier who cannot give you those numbers in writing has not shipped many machines.